


A Month of Tuesdays

by wickedg



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: 50s Britain AU, F/M, It kinda super fits if you think about it, Sansa has a cinema code of conduct, Sansa is a cinephile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:31:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedg/pseuds/wickedg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>50s AU It all starts with the tiny room in the Tyrells' home, when Sansa finds herself enraptured by the coronation of the Princess becoming a Queen. It's so romantic, really, and Margaery quite agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Month of Tuesdays

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw a prompt on tumblr from an anon that no one else took, so...I grabbed it for myself and it looks like it's mine for now. Hah. 
> 
> Kudos to those who know the film at the very end :)

Father doesn’t like the Tyrells, but it cannot be helped that the family provides the best telly on the lane for the Coronation, along with the largest living room. Father also doesn’t like televisions, refuses to buy one, so there’s nothing for it really, but to huddle inside floral wallpapered room, and watch as a Princess becomes a Queen.  
  
It’s so romantic, really, and later when Sansa finds herself sitting opposite her best friend’s brother at the street party, his smile charming to those he gives it to, she sighs to Margaery that she wishes she were a princess. Margaery agrees, and they spend the rest of the night thinking of how wonderful they would be, Princess Sansa and Queen Margaery, and Sansa doesn’t mind, not really, secretly thinking of how Prince Loras and Princess Sansa would sound so _lovely_ , so pretty. She whispers it to herself in bed, staring up at her soot-stained ceiling, listening to her sister’s soft snores in the bed opposite.  
  
Sansa remembers hearing rumours of how her father had fought alongside royalty in the war, but mother gives her a look and sternly tells her not to mention it- _ever_ to her father, and though it feels like an age since her brothers and father returned, hurt and damaged, Arya, in one of her less annoying moments, reminds her that while they were out in the countryside, father and Robb and Jon had been up all night, killing Jerrys, something Sansa quite likes to forget much of the time.  
  
It isn’t long after, however, when she and Margaery manage to sneak away from her eldest brother’s leaving for Uni ‘do, and save up enough to go see Titanic in the cinemas, and, tears in her eyes, watching as Robert and Julia say a touching farewell on deck of that doomed ship, that Sansa begins to worry that she has become obsessed with the maudlin.  
  
Audrey Hepburn, however, merely informs her that maybe Sansa is just obsessed with the romance of the flickering pictures instead, seeing a girl so beautiful dance across the screen, so elegant, so charming, for just ninety minutes until she finds her prince and they finally kiss under the large ‘The End’ credits.  
  
It isn’t long until the boys at school find out that Sansa Stark loves to sit in a darkened cinema, and so when she can’t afford it herself, she takes terrible advantage of the boys at her school who aren’t Gregory Peck or Cary Grant or Steve McQueen, by finally saying yes to their dates, demanding to pick the film herself. Sometimes, when she thinks it needed and can manage it, she drags along her sister or her older brother Robb, citing that her parents commanded her to have a chaperone. For even when she found her thoughts straying away from the meandering plot, Sansa didn’t have the patience for people interrupting her viewing.  
  
It’s rude, she knows, but at least some of the smarter boys figure out that a hand to her thigh won’t distract her enough from the screen in front of them, and so she lets them stroke her leg through her dress, and sometimes she even picks films the boys themselves deem more worthy of their attention, looking at her as the lights come up with a hint of regret, but unable to stop themselves gushing over the War Film they just watched.  
  
She is late walking home from one such non-date, mind occupied with the bravery of the men in the story, inserting her father and brothers into the roles, thinking of them with pride and fear, when she sees a stranger knocking on the Tyrell’s door. It is dark, and she cannot make out much of him, but his profile is gentle and striking somehow, at the same time. Her eyes immediately darken the scene around them, her mind adding a foggy atmosphere, and suddenly she is in a classic trench coat, and this man has a hat tilted over his head, a burning cigarette in his hands. She can hear the saxophone, so clear, so low as it plays with the strings, as he looks to her, tilts his head in her direction, raises a hand in silent greeting.  
  
 _It is a code_ , she thinks, reaching back to the silent language the spies used the film she was returning from, and she is about to reply in kind when Margaery’s voice cuts through her cinematic state, brings the world back into bright colours and hues, the scene rapidly disappearing before her eyes.  
  
“You’re back!” She trills, and hugs the stranger to her, a flood of light from the Tyrell home cast over them.  
  
“I thought I’d catch the late train in,” he is saying, and Sansa sees the suitcase next to him; Margaery spots her in the shadows.  
  
“Sansa, look! Willas is back-are you _just_ getting back in now? All alone?” And Sansa is glad for the shadows across her face, hiding the blush on her cheeks. She doesn’t let Margaery go to the cinema with her, doesn’t let the girl know that her passion has progressed to the point where she now has a secret pair of specs hidden deep in her handbag. They are both a little too vain for that.  
  
“Hello Willas,” she calls out, “welcome home.” And as he turns to her, she hears the music swell again, this time from an epic romance, his handsome face lit up like a beacon, lips curling up into a slow smile, and oh, his teeth, his pearly white teeth just gleam and-  
  
“Sansa, what are you doing out here?” Oh dear. Her father.  
  
“Just saying hello, father.” She says, and skips past him into the Stark home, up the narrow stairs and into her bedroom, calling out a breathless ‘goodnight!’, collapsing onto her bed with a sigh.  


* * *

  
This must be the third time she has seen him, but the first time he has noticed her. She sees him standing with his brother, Garlan, and his new wife, Leonette (the name alone makes Sansa wish she had it for herself, instead of the young-sounding ‘Sansa’. She has a job of her own now, a rented room of her own across the city from her family, and her name does little to reflect her being an independent.), across the foyer, and before she can turn back to the ticket booth, he raises his hand in greeting, a smile on his kind face.  
  
His kind, _handsome_ face, she amends, watching with a grin of her own as he makes his way across the room to meet her.  
  
“Are you here often, Sansa?” he asks, and they both wince a little at his words sink in. Sansa quickly jumps to his rescue, however, with a nod.  
  
“Yes. I like to come Tuesday evenings. I do so enjoy the pictures.” She gushes slightly, knowing that Margaery must have told tale of her school friend’s love of cinema. “What are you watching tonight?” She inquires, nodding to where Garlan and Leonette are lining up at the concession stand.  
  
Willas glances behind at them, hands clasped together, Leonette leaning up to give her husband a quick kiss on the cheek.  
  
“We’ve got tickets to the new George Cole,” he says, as Sansa collects her ticket, and they both slowly wander closer to his brother and sister in-law. “Too Many Crooks, I believe it’s called.” He continues, looking down at the tickets in his hand.  
  
Sansa just waves her own single admission ticket in the air, and tries a little not to let her excitement get the better of her.  
  
“Me as well,” she says, and though she hopes he asks her to sit with them, for it would be so terribly lovely if he did (Sansa has not been out with a man in a long while, and would quite welcome the company), part of her also hopes he will not. She has long grown out of having to put up with men groping her thigh in the flickering lights for the price of admission, and now that she has her own means of getting a glimpse of Hollywood once a week, she has become used to watching in comfortable silence.  
  
“Would you like to sit with us? Unless you’d rather sit by yourself-I know Margaery made mention of that, and I wouldn’t want to interrupt your viewing.”  
  
But Sansa just smiles and shakes her head. No, of course she’d like to sit with them, she replies, for there’s nothing quite like enjoying a film with friendly company.  


* * *

  
It is two Tuesdays later when she sees him again, this time alone.  
  
It is four Tuesdays when they watch the new Hitchcock film, Vertigo, and oh, it thrilled her. She has quite thoroughly fallen in love with James Stewart, and tells Willas after, about the film Rear Window, how she has petitioned for the cinema to do a short re-release of the film, at _least_ so she could watch it one more time.  
  
“I haven’t seen that one, myself,” Willas says, sipping at his tea in the café they have found, a solace from the rain that drenches the city around them, prolonging their time together before they go their separate ways.  
  
Sansa’s eyes widen, and she feels as if he has truly lost something in his life, missing such a film.  
  
“But-but that had Princess Grace in it!” she exclaims, relishing in the fact that she could use the princess moniker in earnest. “Oh, Willas,” she continues, shaking her head, “you are truly missing out. It was such a fantastic film, I shall petition doubly so, now, for them to screen it again." She explains the plot loosely to him, and can’t stop herself from gushing over the dresses she had memorised, the patterns she had worked on to replicate them, the completed gowns hanging neatly in her tiny closet at home.  
  
She blushes, remembering that he is working as an academic in the library at King’s College, that he must have a higher expectation of conversation than to listen to a girl waffle on about dress patterns.  
  
But he must take some pity on her, she thinks, for he just smiles and nods.  
  
“And have you found occasion to wear these dresses anywhere?”  
  
“Ah, no, not yet. I’m waiting to find a proper dye.” She answers, touching her hair, and he frowns.  
  
“Dye?”  
  
“Oh, _yes_. The princess’s shade, to be exact. She’s such a lovely blonde, don’t you think? One of the girls at work says she knows a boy who works in shipping who can get me a bottle matching hers.”  
  
As he leans forward, Sansa wishes she had kept her hair up in it’s customary bun that day, but the pins had been digging in most uncomfortably, and she had quite given it up in the loos before running for the bus to get to this non-date the same girls had teased her about, for he takes one long strand in his large fingers, strokes it, gently tugs on it, and continues to frown a little.  
  
“Willas?”  
  
“Your hair is lovely, Sansa.” And that is all he says on the matter, all Sansa wishes to hear. She has a room she rents, a job she loves, a life of her own, and as the world keeps changing around her and her family, she has found solace in being able to keep control of her decisions, reluctant to give that up. It’s _hers_.  
  
But this is Willas. Sweet, gentle, Willas, who never talks to her while the film is playing, who seems to enjoy her excitement at a new film, or her dismay at a disappointing one, and who vowed to keep her secret safe about the spectacles she has to wear whilst in the darkened room.  
  
She looks at him, and shakes her head slightly, ridding herself of any thoughts of him, sips her tea.  
  
The next time they meet, she shows up in a blonde wig she filched from work, and laughs at his dazed expression. It is not a cut that suits her, and the colour, she was dismayed to find out, flipping her head back, pulling the wig on, doesn’t look nearly half as nice as she wanted it to. But at the giggles and coaxing of Miss Mordane, her immediate, normally stern and sullen superior, she wears it out to meet Willas in anyway.  
  
They watch Gigi, and for the first time, Sansa finds herself uncomfortable at the subject matter, suddenly aware of how much older her companion is, of how much she roots for the title character and her unexpected beau, both knowing each other since Gigi’s childhood, of how much she realises she would quite like her life to mirror the screen’s-minus being trained to be a courtesan, of course.  
  
It is after coming out of Dracula (she had had to cover her eyes more than once, and Willas laughs a little at her for it) that she desperately prolongs their after-tea session, unwilling to go back to her dark room in the dark house on the dark road, that Sansa finds herself talking of just about anything that pops into her head, almost wishing she had the courage to ask him to escort her home without ruining this...whatever they were.  
  
Friends, she supposed.  
  
“Hula hoop?” He asks, raising a brow at her, and Sansa almost huffs with impatience, at his job that apparently keeps him from having any fun whatsoever. Working as a seamstress at Madame Tussauds could be tiring, and fickle almost, all those tiny details that refused to cooperate sometimes, but she got to laugh and joke with her work mates, got to dress real princesses, old and new, while he must barely speak above a whisper in that library of his.  
  
“Yes, Willas. A hula hoop. It’s this round...thing and you move your-oh, I’ll just show you!” She exclaims, annoyed at herself for not coming up with the right words.  
  
How does one really describe the hula hoop, anyway? She muses, her arms up and away from her body, her hips and waist moving back and forth in a circle, explaining that the large hoop would be spinning around her right now, if she had one.  
  
Finally, she stops, and sits, brushing her legs against his as she pulls herself into the booth again. He jerks back, almost as if in surprise, and she mutters her apology, manners drilled into her by her mother, by her terrible aunt Lysa who had taken Arya and her in during the Blitz, and it is all too fast when he excuses himself for the night, and Sansa finds herself in quite the restless sleep that night, her dreams haunted by a terrible vampire, and she runs runs runs, finally, into the arms of her own Jonathan Harker, the gallant Van Helsing fighting the horrific creature away from her and her beloved.  


* * *

  
 It is a hot July night when she meets with him to see a film she has read the book of, but had missed the original release for, and she is glad when he smiles at her explanation for the small black hat perched atop her hair, the anklet glinting on her bare leg.  
  
“It’s what she wears in the book, Willas, and I saw the most darling photo of Miss Stanwyck in this hat not just the other day.”  
  
She watches as his eyes keep flickering down to the silver chain that rests on her pale ankle as they line up for popcorn, and breaks her rule of cinema going for the first time in her life as she drags him out halfway through the film (she’s read the book, she knows the end, she reasons with herself), and pulls him down the alleyway behind the cinema house, and taking one deep breath, two, before:  
  
“There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff,” she drawls and leans up to meet his lips with her own.  
  
There is no swell of music as he begins to respond, his large hands finding her waist and gently tracing up and down her spine. The world around her does not turn to technicolour as she eventually pulls back, and nor is there a beautiful sunset for them to walk into as he smiles broadly at her, but there may as well be, she thinks, as he utters “That tears it,” and pulls her back in for another beautiful kiss, another exhilarating embrace.  



End file.
